Task 2c - Critical Reflection on Reader 2

Critical Reflection on Reader 2

Reflection is something that I use all the time in my profession, not only reflecting daily but also by the hour/minute.  Teaching is a profession that requires one to constantly review and adapt the chose approach.  As mentioned in Reader 2, ‘reflection is used in and by a number of professionals, particularly those professionals whose job it is to be in the process of change’ (Middlesex University, 2012: 4), and as a teacher the change that I am a part of the process of is the change in the minds of my students, enabling them to learn and develop.  The only time that I have considered myself to have learnt from experience is when I have failed at something, commonly when I do something right I do not consider my actions to have taught me anything.  Obviously, when undertaking an action, be that correctly or incorrectly, you are always going to learn from what you have done but I only seem to think I have learnt from experiences that I have had that have gone wrong or badly.

The first part of Reader 2 that really made me consider and reflect on my profession was the exploration of Kolb’s learning cycle.  I have always considered the process of learning as an on-going cycle as I think that even when at the top of your game you are continuously striving to improve further, with the improvements coming from the review of previous actions.  When first considering where I entered Kolb’s cycle I thought that I would enter the cycle at the concrete experience stage.  The reasoning behind this was based upon the idea that as a former dancer, and now teacher of dance, I learn through doing.  Something that concreted this idea was the fact that I have never liked to sit down and write a plan for what I was going to do, due to the fact that I have never been one to sit and write anything, even when I was at school.  This initial thought process linked to the allocation of my place in Kolb’s learning cycle could be linked to Carl Jung's idea ‘that learning styles result from people's preferred ways of adapting in the world’ (Online: [2]).  On further reflection I think that I had let the knowledge of my past, from being at school, heavily influence this decision without fully considering the other options as when I fully considered all areas of the cycle I realised that the place at which I most commonly enter it was not concrete experience and rather abstract conceptualisation.  Though when actively learning something I do tend to get up and do it this always comes with some planning, though not the planning that I first thought of which I removed from possibility due to the written element.  I realised that I always think something through in head before attempting it.  The fact that I made this initial mistake does not surprise me as I also consider myself as somebody who Donald Schon would say undertakes reflection-in-action rather than reflection-on-action.

Donald Schon has made me realise that timing of reflection plays a key part in the reflection that takes place and as I have previously said, I will commonly not only reflect daily but also hourly or even by the minute.  If Donald Schon’s idea holds truth that the different amounts of time between action and reflection should throw up differences in the outcome of my reflection.  The fact that I consider myself to be someone who is able to and feels more comfortable to undertake reflection-in-action is something that does surprise me after reading Robert Kottcamp’s opinion that reflection-in-action ‘is more difficult to achieve’ (Kottcamp, R. B. 1990).  I think the main reason that I find this more time allotted way of reflection easier is due to my previous professional experiences working as a performer.  When working as a performing it is imperative that one is always considered to be working at the highest ability and therefore the process of reflection-in-action is necessary as, as said by Donald Schon it is ‘the more powerful for improvement of practice’ (Kottcamp, R. B. 1990) due to the fact that is the performer their self realises that they are not working to the best of their ability they can make instantaneous improvements, thus fixing the flaws in the practice.  Kottcamp has taken the idea originally presented by Schon and altered to allocation of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action to ‘on-line’ and ‘off-line’ respectively, emphasising the change in time and type of reflection between the two.

Undertaking this module has required me to keep a journal for the first time in my life.  In his chapter titled Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice in Promoting Journal Writing in Adult Education David Boud states there are many different purposes for writing a journal including;

‘to capture an experience, record an event, explore our feelings, or make sense of what we know. We may want to narrate something of importance so that others can see what we saw in it. Sometimes we write primarily for ourselves, sometimes for others. Journal writing is as varied as those who engage in it.’ (Boud, in Middlesex University, 2012: 14)

My journal was for a purpose that didn’t necessarily fit one of these purposes suggested by Boud as though I was keeping the journal for myself I was also keeping the journal to experience keeping a journal, so primarily for the experience of journal writing and having a physical representation of my active reflection.  Boud goes on to describe the practise of reflection as the ‘taking [of] the unprocessed, raw material of experience and engaging with it as a way to make sense of what has occurred’ (Boud, in Middlesex University, 2012: 15), this however if something that I personally do not agree with.  As I have previously mention, I consider my personal approach of reflection to fit with Schon’s model of reflection-in-action, or as Kottcamp has named it, ‘on-line’, and therefore when I come to writing my journal the experiences that I am engaging with are not unprocessed or raw.  To an extent I would argue that as soon as one has undertaken an experience the reflection process, whether consciously or subconsciously, starts immediately.  As I have touched on previously, I consider myself to only consciously reflect on situations that have gone wrong, yet, I still believe that I am reflecting on my practices that do go correctly as I will always endeavor to follow the same or a similar method in future, thus some form of reflection must have taken place.  This type of reflection is referred to as Reflection in Anticipation of Events.

After starting this module, journal writing is now something that I am no longer new to and no longer daunted by the thought of as I have come to realize it is just an extension of what I do every day, either when I think back over all the things that have went well whilst having a nice relaxing bath or thinking about all the things that went wrong whilst pouring myself a glass of wine.  The main thing that daunted me when I first realized I would have to write a journal was the word write.  Writing is something that I have always been put off by as I feel that it stunts my creative ability, though through the keeping of a journal and also through the trial of different journal writing styles this is something that no longer is a barrier as I now see it as an extension of my own reflection process which I undertake actively on a daily and hourly basis.

Bibliography

Kottcamp, R. B. (1990) means for facilitating reflection. Education & Urban Society, 22, 182-203.

Middlesex University (2012) Reader 2: The Reflective Practitioner.

Online Resources

[1] http://www2.unca.edu/et/br022102.html

[2] http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm